I stir in bed, feel the comforters piled on top of me. I can tell that it’s cold in my room, but I’m toasty warm, because Aiden’s body is curled around mine.

I open my eyes and find that he’s a little slower in returning from the dream than I was. He’s still asleep, his chestnut hair tumbling down over his forehead, his chest rising and falling slowly. I turn over in his arms, so I can face him. He doesn’t wake up, but he does shift to let me rest comfortably against him, his eyelashes fluttering.

He was right. It was different from a regular dream. For one thing, I remember all of it. For another, I have something from it snuggled up with me in bed.

I gently trace my fingers down his cheek. My Companion Plant. My Guardian.

He stretches out his long legs, yawns, and rolls onto his back. I fold myself over his side, my hand curling on his chest. A stripe of sunlight falls over his face, and he blinks slowly awake.

He looks down at me, his eyes warm and sleepy. “Hi.”

“Is it all true?” I ask, very quietly.

Aiden shrugs his broad shoulders, then scrubs a hand over the stubble on his face, which has gotten thicker and darker overnight.

“Who knows if any story that old is true? But in my family, at least, it’s accepted as our history.”

He smooths his fingers over my forehead. A flash of white-blue light dances in his eyes, and when his hand comes away, the dream is there, making lazy circles around his fingertips. It sinks back into his skin, and disappears.

“I haven’t seen it for a long time,” Aiden says, looking up at the ceiling. “Forgot some of the details.”

“Can you watch it as many times as you want?”

“Yeah, but I haven’t wanted to watch it again. I guess it made me feel - special, or whatever, when I saw it as a little kid. Soon as I got older, though, I started to hate it.”

“What?” I prop myself up on my elbow, staring down at him. “Why would you hate it? You’re part of something so - so…”

I fade off, having turned up no adequate words for what I’m trying to say.

Aiden glides his fingers down my arm, a regretful look in his eyes.

“It’s just a dream to you, Jamie. It’s my life. A really long time ago, someone promised something that wasn’t theirs to promise, and now this is my life. Forever.” He bites his lip, then pins on, all in a rush: “And if I ever have a kid, it’ll be their life, too.”

I sit back, dazed. I don’t know why, but up until this moment, I hadn’t really considered that last part.

The implications are far-reaching, and I’ve just realized that if Aiden is as serious about me as I am about him, I need to give this some serious thought.

“What happens… what happens if you adopt a kid, instead?”

Aiden’s eyes dart quickly to me, then away again.

“That wouldn’t make a difference. It’s passed through family, not blood. Like - take your dad, for example. Technically, he’s your stepdad. He’s not your biological father, but that doesn’t matter, does it? Does it make him any less your real dad, that you guys aren’t blood related?”

“No. Definitely not.”

Aiden shrugs helplessly. “Yeah. So.”

I roll onto my back, struggling to wrap my head around all this. Aiden goes quiet, giving me time.

Eventually, he shifts onto his side and looks down at me, working his way towards saying something.

“I see it differently, now,” he murmurs. “The dream. You make me see it differently.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was just… nice to see it through your eyes.” Aiden taps my nose, a small smile playing around his lips. “Reminded me of how I felt the first time I watched it. When it made me feel special, instead of making me feel - bargained away.”

My chest constricts, and I roll into his arms, so forcefully that I knock him flat onto his back. He lets out a startled laugh as I start peppering his face and neck with kisses.

“What’s-?”

“How do you not see it?” I speak between kisses, not letting up for a second. “Seriously, how?”

His words are half-formed from laughter. “See what?”

“Just - what-” What a beautiful, special, precious thing you are. “Ugh! Nothing. You dumb idiot.”

“Feels like I’m being angrily yelled at,” Aiden muses, as I drop my head to start kissing his chest. “But also this is happening, so. I’m not sure what’s going on.”

The Fate was right. Sometimes human emotion is too powerful to know what to do with. Right now, I don’t know how to translate mine into words.

Instead, I fold them into kisses, and press those kisses all over the warm, welcoming body of my Guardian in my bed.

~~~~

Destinee and I have concurrent shifts this morning. She takes the front room, and I end up in the back, tasked with unpacking a few boxes that were delivered earlier.

Thank god, because this means I don’t have to handle any customers, and I really, really need some time to think.

I don’t know how to start sifting through everything from the dream, all this new information. My mind keeps coming at it from different angles. I’m all over the place, thoughts occurring to me, and then falling away before I can properly work through them.

Eventually, I pull my headphones out of my ears. I push aside the seed packets I’d been sorting, then lean my palms on the work table, taking a breath.

I close my eyes.

The image that comes to me is one from high school.

A lunch table in the cafeteria. Grant, Noah, and Ralph sit on one side, joking around, shoving each other, shouting. Melanie is there, too. She’s on the far side of the table, giggling with her friend Dahlia.

In the middle of all the fun and laughter, there’s Aiden. Sitting in silence, his chin propped on his palm. His expression is blank, empty. He’s clearly not listening to anything anyone around him is saying, even when Melanie leans over to speak into his ear. His cold blue eyes are observant, but otherwise, he looks so detached from everything.

I wonder if he was looking around that room, thinking about which of us he might have to snatch back from death’s door, and which of us might slip through his fingers before he could. In a town this size, the odds that he would have to save someone he knows... in fact, thinking back, haven’t there been two, already, from our high school days?

Ralph, a save.

Kasey, a loss.

How many people had Aiden already saved, by that point? When he was fifteen?

How many had he already lost?

There’s nothing easy about being a Guardian. That’s probably the very last word I would ever use to describe it. But to be a Guardian without help, without training, without a way to control the noise - without parents… On top of everything else, the responsibility of saving people fell to him far before it should have, when he was way too young.

Sometimes he even has to take a chance on his own life, doing this. I’ve only helped him with four saves, but already, I’ve seen him dive into a raging river, and step directly into the arc of a hard-swung baseball bat.

All because of a promise someone else made, hundreds of years ago.

I’m starting to understand the storms of torrential anger that sometimes hit Aiden out of nowhere. Why they still burst out of him, even though he’s had a lifetime of practice keeping things concealed, secret, and inhibited. He’s only twenty-six, but so many profoundly unfair things have already happened to him. I can’t imagine that it’s easy, the battle to accept and appreciate what he is, after it’s made his life so much harder than it could have been.

I let out a heavy breath, my heart aching for him.

Once again, my mind drifts back to what he said about having kids. It’s been pulling at me ever since we talked this morning.

Aiden and I have only been dating for like, a few months, and I really need to chill. We are so far away from even having that conversation, and I know that, but - here I am, thinking about it.

If Aiden becomes a dad, there will be another Guardian in the world. They’ll have to face down the noise, the loss - all the complications, responsibilities, and struggles it comes with. Impermanency might change the equation, but we’re talking about forever. Their whole life.

It is no small burden, the Fate said, in the dream.

No fucking kidding.

And yet… Aiden said that when he was younger, it made him feel special, to be a Guardian.

It got crushed out of him by everything else, until he could only see the burdens, not the beauty. But there was a chance for him to love what he is. Maybe there’s still a chance, now. He did say he saw the dream differently, this time.

If a budding Guardian had another around, a Guardian proud of who he is, to look up to...

It’s not like we have to repeat the mistakes of the past. I know Aiden, so I know that he’d be a better father than his own was by like, a billion miles. As for me - I’m not going to do to Aiden what his dad did to his mom. Not a chance in hell.

And Aiden would never, never tell his kid that no one could love them. Not after he worked so hard to unlearn that same thing.

Ariana said in her letter that she had lived both loving and loved, and Aiden - isn’t he happy, now? With me?

I mean - it doesn’t seem impossible, that he and I could have ourselves a happy little Guardian, right? If we love that little Guardian so much that they never lose sight of what a special thing it is, to be one?

I can’t even believe that I’m thinking about this. Aiden called me a commitment-phobe when we first got together, and he wasn’t totally wrong. What’s happening to me, honestly?

“Jamie!”

I startle and spin around, sending my headphones flying. Destinee is standing in the doorway, her eyebrows arched.

“Jesus!” She spreads her hands in a calm-down gesture. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing!” I press my fingers to my chest, my heart hammering. “I just wasn’t expecting you to walk in here and start yelling at me!”

“I already said your name at a regular volume like, five times. It was like you didn’t hear me. Until I yelled, and you jumped like a total spazz-”

“Okay, okay-”

“Seriously, what’s your deal, right now?” Destinee’s eyes narrow, and she takes a step back. “Are you sick? Stay away from me, if you are. I need my voice. I have a slam on Saturday, and I don’t want to spend the whole week mainlining vitamin C.”

“I’m not sick.” I rub my hands over my face, blinking hard. “I have a lot on my mind, that’s all.”

“Is that why you’re standing here staring at nothing?”

I put a hand on my hip, scowling. “Do you need something, or?”

“Aiden is here, he wants to know if you’re too busy to see him. You’re obviously not busy, so.” Destinee pokes her head out into the shop. “Aiden! Come over here!”

“I was busy!" I protest. "I took a five-minute break!”

“I don’t care, take as many breaks as you want. I’m not the one who’ll have to stay past their shift to unpack all these boxes - hey, Aiden, you can come in. Are you and Jamie having a fight, or something?”

“What?” Aiden pauses in the doorway behind Destinee, surprised. His eyes lift over her head and find me. “I didn’t think so?”

“Des! I told you, I’m a little zoned out, it’s not a whole thing!”

“I just came in here and found him doing nothing, staring at the wall,” Destinee informs Aiden.

I can see by his expression that he immediately understands what’s going on. That we’re definitely not having a fight he didn’t know about. That I’m clearly still working through everything.

He weaves around Destinee, joins me at the table. He’s in his work clothes, and even right now, with my thoughts so scattered, I have to take a second to appreciate the view.

“Hi,” he says softly, and I smile up at him.

“Hi.”

“Oh. Okay. You know what, yeah. I can tell you two aren’t fighting, just from that.” Destinee clicks her tongue. “I still can’t believe I didn’t figure out that you two are together. When did it start, again? Officially?”

“At the Fling Thing,” Aiden tells her, winding an arm around my shoulder.

Destinee’s mouth drops open. She turns to look at me, some realization unfolding on her face.

“Is that why you turned down that cute guy at the bar, Jamie? When you came with me to the poetry competition? Oh, my god. It finally makes sense.”

Aiden blinks at Destinee, then smiles down at me.

“Oh, did you?” he asks, ruffling my hair affectionately.

“Okay.” My cheeks are steadily turning redder and redder, the longer this disaster of a conversation goes on. “Destinee, shouldn’t you go like, be in the store, in case there are customers? Radical idea, I know.”

She sticks her tongue out at me before she leaves. Aiden waits until she’s gone, then bends to give me a kiss.

“I’m on my lunch break, so I have to get back soon, but I wanted to see how you’re doing. I know that was a lot of information for you to take in, last night.” He tugs gently on a strand of my hair. “Appreciate you forgoing the cute bar guy from the poetry competition, by the way. Even after I ran off on you.”

“Come on.” I poke his chest, rolling my eyes. “You seriously think I had anyone but you on my mind?”

Aiden smiles again, then lifts my hand to his mouth, kisses my knuckles.

“Can’t leave you alone for two seconds, Keane,” he rumbles, his blue eyes sly and sweet. My toes curl in my shoes, and just like that, I’m back in the present, pulled out of my thoughts.

“I’m glad you came.” I stand on my toes, so I can bring my face closer to his. “I’ve been thinking about you all morning.”

Aiden hesitates.

“So you’re not freaked out, knowing what I am?”

“No.” I nuzzle my nose into his. “I mean, have I totally wrapped my head around the idea that my boyfriend can wield the powers of fate? No, not exactly. But it’s fine, I - I’ll get there.”

Aiden lets out a soft laugh.

“You always make it sound so-” He breaks off, shaking his head. “Look, I also came by because I wanted to thank you. I know you were nervous about dreaming like that, but I would have had a really hard time figuring out how to explain everything.”

“You should just do what I do,” I tell him. “Start the sentence with no idea of where it’s going, then stammer until you forget what you’re trying to say, then get really embarrassed. Start over, fuck it up again, die a little inside, consider changing your name and fleeing the country-”

Another huffing laugh, this one half a groan. “Alright, alright.”

“You don’t have to thank me for dreaming it.” I squeeze Aiden’s fingers. “I understand.”

He fixes me with a grateful look. “Thank you, anyways.”

“Mhm. Am I the only non-Guardian to see it? I was wondering.”

“I…” Aiden rubs his arm, wincing. “I’m not supposed to show it to anyone besides the next Guardian, but I did show it to my aunt, after I moved in with her. I knew she’d always wanted to see it, my mom would never show her...” His blue eyes narrow and turn fiery, his lips twisting into a scowl. “I thought it was such bullshit, that she shouldn’t get to see it, just because she wasn’t chosen. That shit is so unfair. And my aunt was really happy, so it was worth-”

He breaks off in surprise as I lean up to kiss him, smiling so hard that my cheeks hurt.

My Guardian can’t help himself, even when he doesn’t realize he’s doing it.

He just can’t help but hand out little miracles.